The flyer you see above is being distributed in the subway system (the “Metro”) of the Washington DC region. Popular outrage at the rise in thefts in the Metro system inspired its creation.

I draw your attention to the photos at the top of the flyer. In a Metro train-car, a White man is stealing an I-Pod from a Black woman and dashing out the door.

This flyer is a stark example of aggressive Political Correctness in action, a microcosm of the ascendant Zeitgeist in today’s USA (i.e., the Multicultacracy). I will offer some analysis below of the flyer to show this.

Beware of White Thieves
— “Thefts of this nature are primarily committed by White men” is an apparent message. Or, at very least, the message is that one must beware of Whites just as much as of others.

— Most people with any actual experience living in the multiracial USA will know that this is laughable. They also know, however, never to point such a thing out. (No one ever points out that the Emperor has no clothes, do they? Except, perhaps, when the Emperor is enfeebled and sick already, when it’s safer: e.g., Radical Anti-Communism was more widespread in the Eastbloc in 1989 than in 1969.)

Still, I marvel at the strength that the “spirit” of this argument has over the minds of so many denizens of our Multicultacracy. To reconcile what their eyes see with what they know they are supposed to believe (the two are contradictory), many or most Nonwhites (and many Metropolitan Whites, as well) allow themselves to fear Rural-Whites. Rural White areas are the safest places in the USA, in terms of crime, yet many metropolitan-area-dwellers never see rural Whites, so it is safe to fear them.

— Assuming that around 50% of riders on the Metro system are White, I will give 20-1 odds that under 5% of the I-Pod thefts are committed by Whites like this man, though it’s most likely closer to 0.5%. We all know it. A White committing theft of this type is rare.

— So, this is a reversal of the racial roles in the real world, so common in media portrayals. This phenomenon has been remarked upon quite a lot by commentators with Racialist sympathies.

The Perennial Evil-Oppressor vs. the Perennial Heroic-Oppressed
— The woman is sitting in a handicapped seat, which is closest to the door. The creators of this flyer must have done this to simplify staging the action portrayed. Yet, there are clear subtexts here, which may be too subtle for most to recognize consciously. On a subliminal level, an allegorical level perhaps, the staging here tells the hapless viewer that Nonwhites are “handicapped” by “institutional-racism”, which is personified by the Black woman sitting in the handicapped seat and the White ogre terrorizing her. Thus Blacks are — and remain — heroic saintly victims.

— That Blacks are “heroic saintly victims” is reinforced if you look at the poster above the woman. The contents of the poster are unclear, but we do clearly see a gently-smiling, proud, young Black male. Juxtaposed with the pathetic visage of the petty thief of a White male, the proud Black male face in this scene seems, in a sense, heroic. There is also something to be said for the difference in quality of clothing and overall appearance: This victimized Black woman is working hard is some professional capacity, which can be seen as heroic.

— That Blacks are “heroic saintly victims” is reinforced by the woman’s attitude towards this theft. She has suffered the loss of a device that will set her back several weeks’ disposable income, and God-knows-how-many hours of fiddling with it to get content on it. All gone. Yet, looking at the Black woman’s face in the second photo, she looks very “Zen”, in her business suit. Her carefully-groomed head shows that though she may be upset, she is not angry. One can detect in her face hints even of pity for the pathetic criminal, loving her sinning neighbor though he oppresses her. This is the attitude that Christians attribute saints as having had, on the occasions of their persecutions.

— Stripped away of all pretension, stripped away of all window-dressing, the subliminal content of this flyer is clear. It is the same message we see in so many Hollywood movies, so many TV shows. The same message we hear from left-wing Howard-Zinn/Michael-Moore historiography: Whites are evil, Nonwhites are heroic saintly victims, we have to be on our guard against the Evil White Menace, the cancer of human history.

I am now through with my analysis of this pair of highly-PC photos that appear on this officially-sanctioned flyer. But I will offer this up for a final thought:

Life in the Bizarro World
— Try to imagine, for a moment, that the races in this flyer were to be flipped. It is inconceivable. Totally inconceivable. Though it is cliche to point this ou, it remains true. No flyer issued by any governmental or quasi-governmental agency in the USA, in the 2000s or now into 2010s, would ever use the image of a thuggish-looking Black criminal victimizing a pleasant-looking White woman. It is totally impossible to imagine such a flyer. [An aside: Imagining such a thing is as difficult as imagining the crude Nazi tabloid Der Stuermer publishing cartoons of heroic and admirable Jews saving the day from some crime committed by malfeascent Nordic-Germans. (Note that the reverse occurred in essentially every issue of that crude, low-brow newspaper, which even top Nazis rejected as too flamboyantly anti-Semitic).]

— But there’s more. It is actually well-near impossible for me to imagine, here into the 2010s, any government-sanctioned flyer of this nature ever using anything but a White for the part of the thief. Maybe if more than one criminal were portrayed, they might toss in a token Nonwhite. If it were a solo criminal, I actually cannot imagine it being anything but a White man at this point.

18 Responses to Beware of the White Crime Wave

I dont see what you see in that flyer. What I do see is how fat the lady and the thief are. Shocking!

Regarding the skin color of the thief, it is a convention. A generation ago most thieves were White. Things change but convention do not. Just as the symbol of a telephone is the picture of a telephone fifty years ago, the symbol of a thief is as it used to be two generation. You dont expect symbols to look exactly like the object, just as the symbol of invalid (the wheelchair on the wall) does not reflect actual invalids.

Most important, the fact that black criminals are rarely shown on paper have no effect whatsoever on reality. I mean, the police knows and American jails are full of real criminals.

This is on the level of the Hollywood fantasy that white males rape black girls. (Lawrence Auster points to FBI data that shows it literally essentially never occurs, see link). BTW, I am not even sure if it’s true that in 1981 (a generation ago), most thieves were white.

Your broader argument fails, too, because the stereotype of a “criminal” in the USA has never involved a face like his (nondescript Northwest-European).

I grew up three generations ago; i.e. the fifties, and I hardly ever heard of black crime. That’s because overwhelmingly my medium-size, agriculturally-based town was full of rednecks. Even then, crime was uncommon among both races and I remember my redneck, German dad always commenting on how the Chinese citizens never got into trouble.

“Most important, the fact that black criminals are rarely shown on paper have no effect whatsoever on reality. I mean, the police knows…”

I disagree. Conventions like this are dangerous, because they lead ordinary people (victims) to expect white criminals and see blacks as victims, when it should be the other way around. Of course, it’s not just the flyer; the convention is ubiquitous. But this flyer campaign might actually do some good (might) if it were accurate and depicted a black man stealing from a white woman.

If you see such a flyer (or whatever), why not add “Justice Department: blacks 64 times more likely to attack whites than other way around,” or “inter-racial crime doesn’t look like this,” or simply “wrong colors.”

I disagree. Conventions like this are dangerous, because they lead ordinary people (victims) to expect white criminals and see blacks as victims, when it should be the other way around.

The ad is a case of wink-wink. The people making the ad know that the crime risk is from blacks, but they still make the ad to be PC. The passengers reading the ad also know that the crime risk is from blacks, even after reading the ad. They know the ad is PC hokum, and discount it.

In the face of such a blatantly anti-White campaign:
(1) Explicit-Racialists would straight away identify this campaign as motivated by #4s, #5s, and #6s (see below), and be disgusted by it.

(2) Implicit-Racialists would take a bit longer to come to the same conclusion as #1, and would probably shut up about it all, preferring instead to talk about some proxy issue, like welfare, or “Islam” (in Europe).

(3) Cognitive-Dissonance Afflictees. (One could also call #3s “Reluctant #4s” or “Wavering #4s”). An ever-increasing share of the Whites of working age today were socialized to believe in Nonwhite (especially Black) Moral Superiority. Eventually, they became adults, though, and saw (if they live in a heavily-Nonwhite area) that Nonwhite Superiority is…exaggerated, at best. They still fundamentally sympathize with the belief in Nonwhite Superiority, as they were trained to do. Their eyes tell them otherwise. They are confused, and try to just avoid conflict. These fence-sitters tend to become, over time, #2s or #4s/#5s. The majority of Whites are probably #3s.

(4) The PC True Believer. They exist in all societies, of whatever dominant ideology. Writers from ex-Marxist countries describe this archetype in Communism; certainly we have the same today. True Believers tend to rise the top in government bureaucracies, of course. The Whites behind this flyer campaign were probably True Believers. What is a true believer? He believes that Racial-Europeans have really harmed Humanity more than helped it, and Multiracialism is a solution. There are probably several incarnations of the True Believer: In some cases, he may well know that the flyer in the OP is absurd, but he believes society should be socially-engineered to attain racial egalitarianism. He would endorse the “it was a white criminal all along” plotlines that are now de-rigueur on crime TV shows, as advancing the noble banner of Multicultacracy. Naivete trumps animus.

(5) Explicit Ethnomasochism is as sure a sign of a decadent society that I can imagine. It is far from “common” in Western-Europe, but it is there. Open hatred of one’s own people. In Germany, ethnomasochists demonstrate with signs that demand “Have Abortions Against Germany” (i.e., ensure fewer Germans are born). This kind of nihilism is rarer in the USA. (Implicit ethnomasochism, needless to say, is a force partially-animating #3s and #4s, as well).

(6) Certain groups tend to view themselves as apart from the ‘White’ whole of American society. They take a tribal mindset, and view what is bad for ‘Whites’ as being good for themselves. Historical grievance comes into play, here. There is no naivete here, as in #3s and #4s — they know what they are doing, and are good at it.

______________________
So there are several people who ‘believe’ in a covered-up “White Crime Wave”, and others who push the narrative for hostile reasons.

Tim Wise’s preposterous (but award-winning) essay “Color Conscious, White Blind” was some mix of #4 and #6 — Tim Wise’s autobiography goes on at long length about how much he identifies with the supposed persecution of his Jewish ancestors (he is only a partial-Jew by ancestry, but the identity is clearly dear to him).

“And yet, when the prestige press decides to go all in on a story to Push the Narrative, like Duke Lacrosse case or Jena Six, they usually seem to wind up with another travesty…”

They’ve eaten their own dog food. On the conscious level they actually believe their message. If they didn’t, they’d look hard for the extremely rare cases of actual white-on-black rape and unprovoked violence. But since they do believe the message that they’re spouting, they think that white racism is everywhere and that they don’t have to look hard for it at all. Almost any case that involves whites and blacks will do. And when their message is reliably contradicted by that almost-any-case, they just think that THAT’s an exception.

Steve Sailer and the commenter are #1s, talking to an audience of primarily #1s and #2s, with many #3s won-over by Sailer, over the years. The commenter is describing #4s.

From the link, about Australian Violence Against Women [VAW] campaign:

the VAW ads portray only one type of offender: the rotten white male

.
Now, I admit to having no first-hand understanding of Australia or its ways. The stereotype is of a nation of laid-back rugged individualists with a bit of a “redneck” flavor. How could such a population (if the stereotype is close to accurate) have allowed this? It boggles the mind.

I am led to believe:
1.) No Western government on this planet today would ever create something for public consumption with a Nonwhite villain and a White victim. Odds against: 1,000-to-1.
2.) There are strong odds as well against any of our governments portraying exclusively Nonwhites in villain roles (as in the VAW linked-to above does for whites), even when the victims are other Nonwhites. Odds against: 100-to-1.
3.) The “multicultural criminal gang” is more likely. I have to wonder whether this elusive creature actually exists in nature. This one probably has equal odds with a pure “White Villainy” approach as in the OP flyer. However, the ring-leader or “brains” will be invariably a “rotten white”.

Now, I admit to having no first-hand understanding of Australia or its ways. The stereotype is of a nation of laid-back rugged individualists with a bit of a “redneck” flavor. How could such a population (if the stereotype is close to accurate) have allowed this? It boggles the mind.

You’ve got to be kidding. You’re about thirty years out of date. The people who run the place today are suffocatingly PC. Anyone under the age of, say, twenty knows nothing else.

Of course, much of the populace remains proudly defiant. Even among sophisticates one can toss around racial language that gets more laughs than it inspires outrage. Among the yocals straight-shooting race talk won’t raise any eyebrows. But people who feel this way have no representation at all.

PS — the guy in the brown sweater has “no trace” of ethnic identity at all? Did you switch graphics after posting this or something?

Some people are always looking for something t rail against. Depending on the age of the writer I doubt he was around when the situation was exactly what that poster showed. People are always lamenting the good ole days meaning primarily the 50’s and earlier, maybe posters like this are trying to subliminally harken back to those days? Ever think of that?